


Time and Tide

by romanticalgirl



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Much love to <a href="http://alethialia.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://alethialia.livejournal.com/"><b>alethialia</b></a> for the beta. Written for <a href="http://terribilita.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://terribilita.livejournal.com/"><b>terribilita</b></a> for <a href="http://help-japan.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://help-japan.livejournal.com/"></a><b>help_japan</b>. Thank you so much for bidding on me and donating!</p><p>Originally posted 5-15-11</p>
    </blockquote>





	Time and Tide

**Author's Note:**

> Much love to [](http://alethialia.livejournal.com/profile)[**alethialia**](http://alethialia.livejournal.com/) for the beta. Written for [](http://terribilita.livejournal.com/profile)[**terribilita**](http://terribilita.livejournal.com/) for [](http://help-japan.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://help-japan.livejournal.com/)**help_japan**. Thank you so much for bidding on me and donating!
> 
> Originally posted 5-15-11

Coming home is like culture shock, like they’ve been gone for decades instead of months. The world feels different, or maybe he does. Maybe he’s what’s changed. Maybe the sand and wind and dust storms have eroded who he was and reshaped him into something new.

He’s heard the requisite speeches about how war changes men, seen the recruiting videos and the movies made by studios steeped in patriotism, as well as the ones mired in cynicism. He’s always thought about what he does as a challenge to himself more than something built up from false pretenses or any great love of country. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in the tenets of what the Corps stands for, wouldn’t be a Marine if he didn’t, but it’s more than that to him. Or at least it’s more than regurgitation by rote and marching drills. He does this for himself first, because it’s what he needs to do. The Marines just give him the highest bar.

That’s what’s changed, he thinks. Before maybe he bought into the hype a little. The best. The brightest. The few. The proud. The problem is that it doesn’t matter how good you are at the job if you get stuck doing something else. Lots of people get screwed over by their jobs, but most people don’t have a job that can get them killed.

“You’re thinking too much, sir.” Brad sits down next to him, stretching his impossibly long legs out on the green grass. There’s a volleyball game going on down at the beach, and somewhere Mike’s got crabs boiling in a pot and steaks on the grill. “Also, I thought things were homoerotic in theater, but this is like a scene out of Top Gun.”

“Could be worse.” Nate picks a blade of grass and tears it in half. “Could be playing badminton.”

“Like Ray wouldn’t be on that in a hot second. Walt would have to gag him just to get him to stop saying shuttlecock.”

“As if that would stop him.”

“Probably turn him on, the banjo-playing backwoods freak.”

“Are you talking dirty about me again, Iceman?” Nate’s not sure how Ray manages to know whenever his name crosses someone’s lips. “You know it warms the cockles of my heart when you do that.”

“No one wants to hear about your cockles, Person.”

“Hey, Person. I got your cockles right here.” Trombley gets the ball to Rudy who slams it down in Ray’s face. Ray can’t block for shit, but he does manage to bump the ball back to Christeson before falling on his ass. Stafford leaps into the air like fucking Spiderman and spikes the ball so close to the net that Nate thinks he might hear the air between the two sizzling with friction. It hits the sand at Rudy’s feet like a dead body.

“Fuckin’ _screwby_ ,” Stafford leaps up on Christeson’s back, knees digging in as he lifts his arms in victory. “You may be pretty, but you sho’ is shitty.” He starts the chant as Christeson carries him around, Ray tackling Walt in an attempt to imitate them and ending with both of them getting a face full of sand instead. Poke flips Stafford off as Rudy picks up the ball, trying to be a good sport.

“Wait for it,” Brad advises him, taking a long drink from his bottled water. He swallows and licks his lips, the corner of them quirked up in a typical Colbert smile. “Three. Two. One.”

“Fucking _assholes_.” Trombley knocks the ball out of Rudy’s hand and, if it weren’t for the net, straight into Stafford’s stomach. Instead it hits the net and sinks, rolling back to Trombley’s feet. “ _Fuck_.”

“War is hell on the home front too,” Brad snorts.

“Is that country music you’re quoting, Sergeant?” Nate cocks an eyebrow, his own smile curving his lips. “The language of inbreds and idiots?”

“You have met my people.” Brad spreads his hands out to encompass the rest of Bravo like he’s Moses on the mountain.

Nate laughs and lies back in the grass, setting his beer on the ground next to him. The sky’s a brilliant blue that screams southern California to him, bright and pale until it slides down and meets the darker water. He closes his eyes behind his sunglasses, listening to the sounds. They’re familiar sounds now – the men laughing and relaxing, giving each other shit just like always, though there’s less of an edge here.

Here. There. Nate doesn’t open his eyes. Keeping them closed is hard, even here, even now. He doesn’t sleep for longer than a half hour at a time, no matter how much he tries to force himself. He sees AK-47s in shadows and gunmen in windows. He forgets which side of the road he’s supposed to be on, plowing down the middle half the time instead. He’s stopped driving, even the short distance to the base, and sometimes he envies Brad the freedom of his motorcycle, weaving through lanes, going fast enough to outrun the bullets still chasing them.

He refuses to give in to the impulse to open his eyes and check his surroundings, instead letting the hot sun burn the residual tension down to nothing, letting the slight breeze blow it away. If there’s anywhere he can relax and feel safe, it’s here, with these men. The problem is that they’re all on edge. They saw things over there, horrors that he knows they can’t forget. Even worse is the knowledge that they didn’t see the worst of it, that there were horrors that they escaped – no one in their battalion died, no one took serious damage. They were almost completely unscathed. He’s not sure which is worse – the post-traumatic stress that they’re all pretending they don’t have, or the guilt that comes from feeling that they don’t deserve to have it at all.

“Do you have nightmares?” Nate turns his head to look at Brad, slightly surprised to see him watching. He holds the blue of Brad’s gaze from behind the safety of his sunglasses.

“No.” Brad shrugs and then turns his eyes back toward the volleyball game. “I usually just don’t sleep.”

“Over there we didn’t have a chance, and over here we can’t.” Nate pushes himself back into a sitting position and rubs his own tired eyes. The sun suddenly seems too bright, the shouts too loud, the food too much like the smell of burning flesh. “I’m going to go for a walk.”

“Nah. Come on.” Brad levers himself up and nods toward the parking lot. No one notices them, or if they do, they don’t comment. Nate follows behind him, trying hard not to lose focus and end up staring at Brad’s ass. He’s noticed the tendency, even when he’s not trying. He’ll be watching the men run the base, and find himself looking directly at Brad. He could be in the middle of the entire platoon, and Nate will single him out without even trying.

“Where are we going?”

“You expect me to give you a straight answer? I’m adhering to the lesson of our esteemed Command: the less you know, the more likely you are to let me send your ass careening into danger.”

“No time to prepare, huh?”

“I could give you time, but chances are I’d lie about your mission, and then you’d be just as fucked as if you didn’t have it, so why waste perfectly good man hours?” Brad vaults over the cement fence that surrounds the parking lot and heads for his bike. He hands Nate a spare helmet and settles his own on the top of his head. “All aboard, sir.”

“You want me to ride on your bike.”

“Well, you could run alongside it, but Recon training aside, I’m not sure how long you’d last.”

Nate smirks and snaps the helmet on. “Bet I could keep up for a while.”

“You’d be going up against some serious modifications. “ Brad straddles the bike and gives the seat behind him a glance. “You climbing on, sir? Or is it a little too much for you?”

“I’m just waiting for you to get settled, Princess.” Nate swings his leg over, catching Brad’s hips with his hands as he steadies himself. The bike’s customized for Brad’s long legs, and it takes Nate a moment to find the foot pegs. Brad’s shirt is warm from the sun, a different kind of heat radiating from beneath it. “So, are we pulling some sort of _Easy Rider_ moment here?”

“As if I’d stoop to that.”

“Duty tomorrow, huh?” He can’t see Brad’s smile, but he knows it’s there. It’s the reason Brad stopped drinking an hour ago, and probably the reason he wants the open road now. Twenty-four hours of sitting still is a lot of time for demons to make up lost ground. “All right, Butch, where are we headed?”

“You know they were criminals who died in an uneven firefight, right?”

Nate shrugs. “Other than the whole outlaws thing, it seems to fit our modus operandi pretty well.” Brad kicks the bike’s engine over and shifts his weight. Nate tightens his grip. “No comment?”

“I think you know exactly what my comment is.”

“Oh, I can imagine, though I’m sure your version is more colorful than mine.”

“I don’t know. I bet you could do the Corps proud.” He backs the bike up, turning his head to smirk at Nate. “Though you are an officer. I might be giving you too much credit.”

“And as an officer, I feel it’s my duty to tell you to get your ass in gear, Colbert.”

“Yes, sir.” Brad hits the throttle and gives the bike gas. Nate’s fingers dig in, hooking through Brad’s belt loops as he tightens his grip. Brad revs the bike, taking a turn just under too fast, leaving the party and the platoon behind in a spray of California sand.

*

Nate doesn’t try to keep track of where they’re going, doesn’t follow one of too many maps in his head. Instead he listens to the road and watches it all fly by to the rhythm of Brad’s breathing. They make their way along the coast, the beaches giving way to rockier crags and cliffs as they go farther north. “Not making a run for the border?”  
“There’s a northern border.”

“Running to Canada seems a little moot at this point. Also, you enlisted.” He presses closer so Brad can hear him, the wind trying its best to whip his words away from them.

Brad doesn’t say anything, just revs the engine higher, taking a curve too fast for Nate’s tastes. He trusts Brad, but there’s a reptile in the base of his brain making him hold on tighter until they hit a straightaway again. He gives up talking, the bike bad enough for conversation without trying to find words to fit the things in his head. It feels like they ride forever, but it still seems all too short when Brad pulls over to the side of the road at a lookout point. The ocean is below them, crashing white and gray and blue, and Nate thinks about the water, about going under, about fear.

“I’m going to England. Joining up with a group there.” Brad’s voice is soft, and it’s not the first set of plans that Nate’s heard. He hears people say phrases like ‘after the war’s over’ or ‘now that the war’s over’ and he knows whatever they think it means, it has nothing to do with now. They started a war. Nothing’s finished.

Except maybe him.

“I’m going back to school.” He hasn’t said that aloud yet, to anyone, and it seems absurd now that it’s spoken.

“Harvard.”

“You know you have to lie on your ‘what I did on my summer vacation’ essay, right?”

“I could write it all out and then just stamp classified on it.”

“Going to make that trip to the Hamptons that Muffy took seem a little shallow, that’s all I’m saying. You’ll never get a date.”

“I’ll muddle through.” Nate rests against Brad’s broad back, feeling the slightest shift in his powerful shoulders. Out here, Brad smells like wind and sun and freedom. So different from the smell of sweat and sand and desperation Nate’s used to. “You think I’m doing the right thing?”

“I don’t even pretend to know what the right thing is.” Brad rubs his hands on his thighs, staring off at something Nate’s not sure he’d want to see, even if he could. “You’re one of the best officers I’ve served with, but I have a feeling that what makes you good won’t last long. Either you’ll get the brass after you for doing your job right, or you’ll start doing your job wrong. We’re all about no-win situations in the US Marine Corps.”

“You give me such hope for the future.”

“You have a bright one, Nate. Whatever you do. Whatever you choose. You’re smart, you’re empathetic, but you’re also determined to do your job. Make your own rules. Then you can only get pissed at yourself when you break them.”

“If you were shorter and greener, you’d be Yoda.”

“Nah, I’d have to make that shit rhyme or something.” Brad exhales and looks over his shoulder at Nate. “We’ll have to do all the ritual bullshit, you know. Paddle party. Roasting you. Flipping you shit. Demoting you to Mister.”

“Yeah.” Something twists in Nate’s stomach, and he wonders if he can suffer from PTSD from leaving this, his men, his family. Whatever else may happen, only they can know what they went through, only they can feel it the way it happened. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

Brad nods, quiet for a moment. The ocean is loud beneath them, and Nate closing his eyes to take it in. When Brad speaks again, Nate’s actually surprised that he has to open them to see him.

“I’m not one for sentimental bullshit, sir.”

Nate has to laugh, the serious tone of Brad’s voice utterly at odds with his deadpan expression. “Definitely not your style, Sergeant.”

“But it’s been an honor to serve with you.”

Nate nods, not trusting himself to speak. His own opinion is the one that’s always mattered, that’s always been his guide, but Brad’s respect means something more, something sharp and almost painful. “And you, Sergeant.”

“I’m still hiring a stripper to show up at your first yuppie bullshit Harvard class. You’ve never seen hot until you see a woman gives you a lap dance to ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’.”

Nate laughs as Brad kicks the engine over, adjusting his grip and pressing close against Brad’s back so he’ll feel the words, even if he can’t hear them. “I’m looking forward to it.”  



End file.
